On 2nd thoughts I felt that its not wise to dump a 1000 liner message
presenting various statistics about Lata here on the mailing list. Those who
have access to RMIM may like to catch it on your news reader. Those who don't
have access to news groups may get it per e-mail from me.
Now, applying these criteria we can start discussing whether G really sang
10-11 thousand songs. The numbers explode in Indian film skies, you know. In
one radio interview I have from 1970/71 the announcer says that G sang 8700
songs and by early 74 it touched 10,500 !!??
Regards, --Sreenivas
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From: sreeni@ktpsp3.uni-paderborn.de (Sreenivas Paruchuri)
Subject: Re: No. of songs sung by Asha ,Lata etc - l.txt [1/1]
Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.misc
Distribution: world
Thanks for taking the time and typing those details about the book, Ashok ji!
Its through Dr. Surjit Singh's series of postings (BIG thanks Dr. Singh!),
providing various statistics IRT Lata, I came to know about this book and made
me literally run for this work. Earlier; i.e. in 1987 or 1988 Filmfare carried
an article (by ?, I still have the issue back home) arguing (IMO rightly!)
that AB sang more than LM. Ever since I had been looking for detailed
statistics of LM's songs. I simply didn't have the time and patience to
go thru the thick volumes of "hamraz" and prepare my own list.
Incidentally, when Surjit Ji's postings were appearing on RMIM, the
well-known music critic V.A.K. Rangarao reviewd the new book on AB by
Nerurkar in _The Hindu_ (I posted it on RMIM those days) and spoke very
highly about it. Having known VAK personally for long years, I know that
he sets his measuring scales very high, and decided to go for both the books.
Its worth the investment, ordering them from India.
Some of the rare pictures, Ashok is refering to, can be seen at Sami's
wonderful web page.
Now coming back to the "numbers" flying ..... this debate is not only
restricted to Hindi field but south-Indian film field as well. The great
Ghantasala is supposed to have sung apprly 10,500 songs. Almost an equal
no. of songs were claimed by AM Rajah's, P.B. Srinivas's and TM
Soundararajan's fllowers. I don't know much about the latter, but in the
case of first three, simply, it can't be true and I argued this elsewhere.
You also hear similar stories about MDs.
I sincerely hope that atleast established film journalists pay some attention
to these matters and not simply join the bandwagon. IF you ask for my
"personal" opinion, I am sceptical. Afterall, for most of the Bombay(/Mumbai)
based film journalists "Indian film" means only Hindusthani film!
Regards, --Sreenivas
--
E-Mail: sreeni@ktp.uni-paderborn.de